UB

University of Barcelona

Information
Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585

addictions, Alzheimer's, Antarctica / Arctic, astrobiology, astrophysics, big data, bioethics, climate change, cancer, behavioural sciences, natural sciences, climate, quantum computing, pollution, covid-19, embryonic development, diabetes, gene editing, education, energy, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, rare diseases, ageing, epidemiology, STDs, physics, immunology, language, mathematics, microbiology, nanoscience, neuroscience, new materials, oceanography, palaeontology, chemistry, robotics, mental health, AIDS / HIV, sociology, supercomputing, transgenics
Contact
Ester Colominas
Head of Institutional Communication Unit
premsa@ub.edu
934035544

If you are the contact person for this centre and you wish to make any changes, please contact us.

SMC participants

Doctor in Biology and research professor in the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Barcelona.

Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Institute of Neurosciences at the University of Barcelona

ICREA Research Professor and Coordinator of the Regenerative Medicine Programme at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), member of CIBER-BBN, Director of the Clinical Translation Programme in Regenerative Medicine in Catalonia, and Professor of Physiology at the University of Barcelona.

Professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Barcelona and member of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology

Associate professor at the University of Barcelona, ICREA Academia fellow, and member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty.

Professor of Microbiology, University of Barcelona

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience

Brainlab, Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona (UB).

UB Institute of Neuroscience

Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute

Lecturer of the Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology at the University of Barcelona, researcher at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and CIBERSAM

ICREA research professor and leader of the QSBio research group at the University of Barcelona

Head of Microbiology at Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, associate professor at the University of Barcelona, and researcher at ISGlobal Barcelona

Contents related to this centre
El Niño

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has declared the onset of El Niño conditions on Tuesday. "The declaration of El Niño by the WMO is the signal for governments around the world to mobilise preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems and our economies," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. According to the WMO statement, El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, setting the stage for a likely rise in global temperatures and altered weather and climate patterns.

pill

A commentary published last Friday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, signed by more than 30 researchers, challenges the conclusions of the systematic review published in the same journal in July 2022, in which the authors concluded that there was no evidence that low serotonin levels cause depression. The researchers in the new paper blame the earlier study for flaws in methodology, among other weaknesses.

embryo

The Guardian newspaper reported on Wednesday that Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz's team had announced the generation of synthetic human embryos from stem cells at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Boston. The author later denied on Twitter that they were synthetic human embryos and spoke only of models, warning that it was pending publication in a scientific journal. The day after the publication in The Guardian, and as reported in El País, Jacob Hanna and his team published a preprint - a publication that has not been peer-reviewed - in bioRxiv on models of human embryos generated from stem cells without genetic editing. A few hours later, Zernicka-Goetz's team posted their preprint on bioRxiv.

El Niño

After three years in which the planet's climate has experienced a phenomenon known as La Niña, in 2023 it gives way to its opposite, El Niño. This has led the World Meteorological Organization to warn that this event, added to climate change, could cause the 1.5 °C limit to be exceeded in the next five years. But what are these "children", how do they affect Spain, how long will they last?

pangenome

In a series of three articles and a companion article - collected in Nature Biotechonology - Nature publishes the first draft of the human pangenome reference, which contains highly detailed data from 47 genetically diverse individuals. The first human genome was published more than two decades ago but, being from a single person, it does not represent human diversity, whereas the pangenome refers to the gene pool of our entire species. The ultimate goal of the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium project is to include genetic material from 350 people by 2024. It is hoped that this data will allow more clinically relevant genetic variants to be identified.

microbiome

Two studies have found changes in the microbiome of patients affected by chronic fatigue syndrome. In particular, they have found a decrease in both butyrate and certain bacteria that produce butyrate. Butyrate is a factor related to the protection of the intestinal barrier and appears to play a role in the regulation of the immune system. Both papers are published in the journal Cell Host and Microbe.

earthquake

Early this morning, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. The authorities have reported thousands of deaths and extensive material damage. A second earthquake has occurred further north than the previous one.

joven

Procrastination in a sample of more than 3,500 students was associated with the development of both mental and physical health problems nine months later, according to a study conducted at several universities in Sweden. The results are published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

microbiota

Two studies published in the journal Nature Communications have found specific characteristics in the microbiota of people with depression, including populations of different ethnicities and habits.

E. coli

Bacterial infections were the second leading cause of death in 2019. This is according to research published in The Lancet, which estimates that one in eight deaths that year was associated with bacterial pathogens. Five of these - S. aureus, E. coli, S. pneumoniae, K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa - accounted for more than half of all bacteria-related deaths.